1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of WIKI applications and, more particularly, to a WIKI application development tool that uses specialized BLOGs to publish WIKI developmental content in an organized/searchable fashion.
2. Description of the Related Art
A WIKI is a collaborative web application that allows end users to add and edit content. A WIKI application refers to a collection of WIKI pages written in a markup language that are interconnected via hyperlinks. WIKIs are served by a WIKI server to standard Web browsers which function as WIKI clients. A WIKI server can also serve a special Web page that is a WIKI editor where users add and edit content. Some WIKI sites permit WIKI content to be written in accordance with a WIKI syntax, such as having special characters to indicate hyperlinked content, bulleted content, and the like. WIKI syntax is generally designed to be more intuitive for end-users to utilize than standard markup languages.
Although WIKI pages are quickly and easily developed by relatively novice developers, conventional development techniques for WIKIs have many significant disadvantages. At present, WIKIs are developed in an ad-hoc, loosely coupled manner. Each WIKI page generally behaves in an autonomous fashion in accordance with internally defined standards. A WIKI application formed from multiple linked WIKI pages typically has a non-cohesive feel. In other words, unlike conventional applications that have many common and consistent components, such as common color schemes, common font sizes and types, common toolbars and toolbar icons, common pop-up windows, common hot-key combinations, and the like, a look and feel of a WIKI application can vary greatly from page to page. Further, a current lack of cohesion among WIKI pages makes it difficult to establish settings that affect an entire WIKI application. State information is generally not retained from page-to-page or session-to-session.
Additionally, WIKI syntax and WIKI editors are presently not standardized and WIKI implementation specifics can vary from one WIKI server to another. Thus, a WIKI developer creating a set of one or more linked WIKI pages for execution on one WIKI server may have to manually adjust or recreate the set of WIKI pages for execution on a different WIKI server.
Generally, software design principles used for most types of programming, such as modularization, software re-use, documenting code, documenting an application, and the like, have not been applied to WIKI applications. This lack of foundational structure has relegated WIKIs to small scale software efforts which can be quickly created by a single developer.
At present, no community/collaboration toolsets exist that facilitate integrated development efforts other than providing content to an otherwise static WIKI application. Tools do not exist to permit developers to collaborate on creating/modifying the WIKI application itself. Existing WIKI tools do not encourage developers to create re-usable code components, to share code components with others, or to utilize code components created by others. What is needed is a mechanism to facilitate sharing and re-use of WIKI application code, preferably in a fashion consistent with general Web 2.0 techniques and protocols.